INTEGRATE · Integrated Solutions for Agile Manufacturing in High-mix Semiconductor Fabs

European IC manufacturers are on the way to become suppliers of customized products for OEM companies, which means high flexibility and product diversity. The project aims at conducting research to support the development of new manufacturing procedures, new organizations and new information and control tools to enable IC production lines to efficiently manage a high product and technology mix and heterogeneous lots of different size and priority for development, engineering and prototyping. With the objective of developing innovative approaches and tools for agile manufacturing in high-mix environments, INTEGRATE aims at: 1.Integrating complex industrial constraints and new technologies in advanced models and methods to support their implementation,2.Integrating decisions taken at different levels to support agility.Actually, the former IMPROVE project allowed developping the algortihms to make the move “from Reactive to Predictive Operations” (ITRS Roadmap). INTEGRATE will go further by addressing the needed improvements of the production environment allowing putting the pieces together and lifting them to the fab level. In both above cases, developing new research is required with strong links between industry and academia. In particular, INTEGRATE will take advantage of IMPROVE achievements to go further by tackling the challenges related to:•Integrating IMPROVE models and methods and proposing novel developments all over the fab to deliver on-target process control and improve WIP and Equipment management. •Transforming data and information collected in the line into sustainable knowledge (“knowledge discovery”) and integrating such knowledge in an improved line management (equipment, material, resources).•Increasing knowledge on process and equipment through integration and correlation with electrical data.